Making way for a digital executor

Last November, one of my columns dealt with death in the online world. Based on the feedback I got, many readers clipped that column and saved it.

C.M. BOOTS-FAUBERT

Last November, one of my columns dealt with death in the online world. Based on the feedback I got, many readers clipped that column and saved it.

While the advice I gave then was sound, there have been some very important changes in how online service providers treat the death of their members, and a recent press release from Google suggests that the complex and often challenging process of wrapping up the online side of a loved one's estate became a lot less painful this month.

The sudden willingness of social websites to acknowledge that their users may actually die in real life represents some serious progress for many of these companies.

My previous column on the subject addressed issues that many readers experienced when they contacted help agents from online services to resolve the status of the deceased member and their account. Often, this initial contact ended in futility.

It wasn't that the (often outsourced) help desk agents did not want to assist. They were unable to do so because death was not an option "» at least in the process-resolution software being used. The best help came from account-security teams at corporate headquarters — not the help desk.

This complication was made more painful by service providers' refusal to address the issue. But a recent announcement by Google of an official "fix" suggests that the winds of change are now blowing through Silicon Valley.

Google announced a new service called the "Inactive Account Manager," which includes a menu that allows users to plan out exactly what will happen to their online possessions if they die or become incapacitated. The options selected there kick in when Google and its services detect that the account holder has not logged in for a predetermined number of weeks or months, as selected by the user.

Considering that we now live in an era in which Wi-Fi access has become ubiquitous and most of the devices we carry are engineered to be "smart" and make use of publicly available Internet access to connect, granting some form of access is an obvious step in the process of insuring that our data survives our death.

After a user specifies how long to wait before taking action, the "Inactive Account Manager" includes customizable warning messages with reminders that a user needs to reset the timer by logging in.

If the timer runs out, everything from your accounts on Google Plus and Gmail, files stored in the cloud on Google Drive and any YouTube files that a user has saved will end up being sent to the people listed to inherit them.

As the type of online possessions expands, it's reasonable to expect that the content covered will grow to include things like songs bought from iTunes, libraries of audio books purchased from Amazon and movies purchased online in digital video file format.

Google has clearly cast the spotlight on what will likely be the future solution to dealing with death online. It probably won't be long before someone clever creates an online estate services company with a digital executor with all of your current account access credentials. When you die, it goes to work, accessing your clouds, social networks and other possessions, moving them into its own storage system and notifying your heirs of their inheritance.

During the time it takes to create that strange new world, the existing one has slowly been changing, too: The terms-of-service agreements that are the source of most of the difficulties related to death online are being reinterpreted.

When the question of death and gaining access to accounts of deceased loved ones became an issue, many service providers latched onto a little-known law — the Stored Communications Act of 1986. Forget that this law had nothing to do with access to the account of deceased relatives — it was enacted before any of the services using it as their excuse even existed.

Terms-of-service agreements made passing your account credentials to a third party — anyone, for any reason — a violation that automatically terminated your account access and account rights. That made it nearly impossible to legitimately pass on access to the executor of your estate. But this is no longer the case for the majority of online services.

Over the past few months, there have been changes in how "third-party access" is interpreted after a user dies. More and more major services are waiving restrictions against "authorized" account access to a lawfully appointed executor or estate administrator.

Major service providers like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Twitter are now accepting that their members have the right to distribute their online possessions.

In the case of Microsoft, the changes allow a designated heir to access accounts, but that access is only through the use of login credentials provided by the account owner. All of the services have maintained their policy to refuse to provide account credentials, even when they are directed by a probate court order to do so, because that would violate the terms-of-service agreement.

Still, there are some changes for the better. But who knows what tomorrow will bring? That's a pretty good incentive to take some time today to add to your will the login credentials for each of your accounts, along with a list of your online possessions, and what you would like done with them.

C.M. Boots-Faubert is a freelance writer who lives in Falmouth. Write to him at chris@boots-faubert.com.